


Story Tells a Girl—

by alexiel_neesan



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-25
Updated: 2013-05-25
Packaged: 2017-12-12 22:50:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/816980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexiel_neesan/pseuds/alexiel_neesan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Melissa McCall is the magic one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Story Tells a Girl—

Melissa McCall is the magic one.

It was in the details. It was in the cracks. Melissa McCall had magic. 

It was something of a family heirloom, passed down from woman to woman— shared knowledge, shared smiles, knowing that there would always be someone at your shoulder to help, to direct, to distract, too, in dark days. It was tìas and aunts and cousins and the knowing nods of the men of the family.

It was a dark day, the day she got the house from her mother. Her mama, her rock, her last direct parent, the one who had held Scott first, who had whispered the secret to the world to the small dark head the same way her mother had done for Melissa, she was gone, and there was no extended family to help the way she had been told they would, and Melissa's husband had no knowing nod to give her. He had smelled like alcohol and other perfumes on the day she had needed him the most. 

Scott was ten then, ten and asthmatic and the only magics she consciously allowed herself in the house, hidden from her husband's view and knowledge, were for him. Little charms, for good sleep and clean air, for strength and endurance. Little touches, for her husband's foot to slip if he walked too close from Scott's door while drunk, for protection from common colds and illnesses, terrified at the idea of the asthma piling up with kids' coughs and passing bugs and of finding her son still and blue one morning. She loved him so much she could see her hands shake, some nights, in the first years, when her only circle was the nursing school, her husband going to school too, and her mother's voice on the other side of the telephone. 

Her husband didn't like the magic. Even if he had always known, even if she had never hidden them, for it was in her blood, in her hands, in her eyes, and she knew she would tell Scott all about it one day, for him to become one of the men who nodded knowingly and stood at the shoulders of the family's women. Her husband didn't like the magic, even when she worked it away from what he could see, could realize. After a while, she kept only the magics for Scott, and the unconscious ones at the hospital. She became so used to hide them, to hide herself, that she started to forget, a little. She would have seen the werewolves and the magic sweeping through Beacon Hills faster, earlier, if she had kept up with it, if she had paid more attention—but she was a single working mother then, a nurse, and she trusted Scott. Her gifts were not in seeing the future.

In Mrs. Stilinski's hospital room, she was there often. She couldn't do much then, her husband was still there and it felt like the magic was locked inside, hidden, hiding her and it. But Mrs. Stilinski had clear eyes until the end, and she whispered: "My son, I think he's like my dziadka, like my babki. I think he's like you. When the time comes… can he go to you?" Melissa nodded without knowing exactly what she had agreed to. She would, but that would come later, and her gifts were not prescience. If she had known, she would have still said yes to Mrs. Stilinski. 

Mrs. Stilinski's son asked to be called Stiles instead of the first name only his mother could pronounce and decided Scott would be his best friend. Scott contemplated the idea, and the day Stiles had told him, as she went to his room to kiss him good night, he asked her. He asked her what a best friend was, he asked her what she thought of Stiles. She said what mothers say, she said he should make a friend— maybe Stiles would be magic, maybe he wouldn't be, and anyway one day Melissa would tell Scott about her family. He'd be the best placed to understand Stiles, seven-and-a-half and too-short hair and big eyes and too fast for the rest of the world. 

Sometimes Melissa was glad Scott did not get her abilities, her abuela's gifts, her mama's. Sometimes she wondered about Stiles's gifts, about how Mrs Stilinski knew he had them, about how she knew he got them from her family— if maybe they were one of those, from her abuela's stories, the ones that created themselves. The ones that created themselves to protect, to hide, to destroy.

When Scott was tiny, coming up just at her waist, and he liked to walk with his feet on hers around the house, then the two-bedrooms by the trailer park, he had a knack for finding all the strays. The cats and the dogs and broken birds, and she couldn't turn away any of them, even with her husband's mocking snorts and cutting comments. Instead, she drove them with Scott to the vet. Alan Deaton was a good man, a better man than the one waiting at home, even then, even if she was denying herself the truth of it, even if she couldn't hear her mother's quiet sighs every time Melissa said no to the offers of coming with Scott because her husband "had something to do" and he wanted them there, where he could see. 

Alan Deaton nurtured Scott's curiosity. Soon, neighbors and acquaintances from the hospital started to ask Scott to keep an eye on their pets when they were out of town, sometimes paid him to walk them. Melissa always told Scott to keep the money for himself, to go for ice cream down the block when his father came home from the latest job he'd be fired from two months later. Sometimes Stiles joined— Melissa encouraged it, as Mrs. Stilinski was back in the hospital, and kept declining, fading a little more each day, no matter how much magic Melissa was thinking about. Melissa gave Stiles something to think about, something to tell his mother, adventures in walking Mrs. Hutchinson's poodle, in leaving water and food in the backyard for Mr Araya's semi-feral cats, in rescuing kittens and baby birds. 

Alan Deaton was a good man, who gave Scott a job as soon as he was old enough to have one. In retrospect, maybe Scott did get her gifts, only in ways she couldn't see. She worked with people. Her son worked with animals, his heart big enough for all of them.

There were dark days. Her mother died, and left her the house. She wanted— she didn't know what she wanted to do, with the house. She wanted her mother back. She wanted for her husband to be there. She wanted Scott to have known his abuela better. In the end, it didn't matter much what she wanted. 

She found out that her husband was planning to sell her mother's house, without her knowledge. She found out, in a way she couldn't ignore anymore, the extend of his cheating. She couldn't ignore his denial of Scott's asthma anymore, his threats to Scott's and her health, couldn't ignore that he was a drunk and a liar, couldn't ignore that "tomorrow, I'll look for a new job tomorrow." She confronted him, about everything. 

She and Scott spent the night at the police's station, filing a restraining order. It was also the first time she met John Stilinski properly. 

Scott was ten and a half and he and Melissa lived in her mama's house. Her ex-husband… she still loved the man she had married, the man he had been. There was no love lost for the man he had become, the one she had a restraining order for, the one she had divorced, the one who had never payed a single dollar of the child support he owed her. He had never came back, like she had feared he would, nightmares of him taking Scott away from her —but he had never had any interest in Scott, not since his asthma had been obvious. The first week, she slept in Scott's bed. The next six months, she slept fitfully, checking every other hour that her son was still there, still breathing, still in his room where he had to be, should be, touching raised knots of wood and paint all over the house—for protection, for security, for good dreams, for good fortune, her mama's charms and her mama's magic wrapping around her and Scott like her mama's arms. It was still not her own magic, for she was still hiding it. 

Even surrounded by the house and her mother's things and the books and the pictures, she forgot about the magic, in bits and pieces. She was a single mother now, and working more shifts than she should have to provide for her son and keep the house, and it was leaving Scott and Stiles running on their own or to Deaton's too often, and Mrs Stilinski was in the hospital again. 

She asked Melissa, again, with her clear eyes in her too thin face, when even Melissa's conscious magics couldn't help with the pain, the exhaustion, the end. "He's like them… runs in the family," she coughed, and Melissa nodded, thin smile on her lips, understanding. "Didn't run by me… John doesn't know. Or maybe he does. Don't let him blame himself, Melissa, please, don't let them blame themselves." 

Stiles had just turned eleven when his mother was buried. Melissa held her tongue and her promises to Mrs. Stilinski, and stood at John Stilinski's shoulder, her hands on her son's shoulders, her son's hand in Stiles'. 

There were dark days. There were days when she held dying bodies brought to the ER for help, for hope, and they could do nothing, she could do nothing but hold a hand, an arm, be there. There were days when entire families were burned in their own homes and she could feel her magic tingle and cry for their pain. She smelt cold ashes and burned flesh for weeks after the fire, after all the Hales but three of them died. She hadn't known them, not really. She thought her mama had, once upon a time.

There were better days. 

John and her grew closer, with grief and two sometimes-too energetic boys. He was elected sheriff, the year after his wife died, and Melissa only nodded and opened her house to her son's best friend. Everyone had their ways of coping. Stiles created stories and elaborate lies that she could see through just by looking at Scott. Stiles also had panic attacks. Ones that left him shaking and sick for a few days, ones that he begged Melissa not to tell about, to anyone. The only one she ever told about was his father, and even when it was the two of them they didn't talk about it. After a few months, she never saw Stiles crying again. 

But all in all they were good kids, smart kids, too smart for their own good sometimes, not really popular in the way they had their own world. She heard a lot about Lydia Martin and Scott's quiet encouragements of his best friend's crush, and how he had crushes too— quiet ones, fleeting ones, for those that were told to her with blushes and embarrassment and quickened breaths. They understood each other, and she was fiercely glad for the strength of the bond between the two boys. And if it sometimes let her stare at the phone and the numbers she still hadn't called, it was no-one's business but hers.

There was a day where John and her found themselves sharing a beer on her mother's house porch, watching Stiles and Scott play lacrosse. She could feel him looking at her, and she looked at him, too. 

"Thanks, Melissa." 

She looked at him better, saw the lines and the grief and the ring he was still wearing— would probably wear it until the end. She wondered, then, about the magics of people, and how Mrs. Stilinski had been a little wrong, maybe, about not being magic. There was no greater magic than love. She knew. She also knew she didn't love John— she would, as a friend, as a best friend, both as alone and overworked as the other, both sometimes looking at their sons like they couldn't quite believe they were there.

She leaned into his shoulder, pushing him a little to the side. "We'll be fine."

He responded by leaning back, taking a swallow of his bottle. He had strong hands, long fingers. She knew of their strength— it was on display in his house, the taekwondo trophies taking dust on the shelf in the living room, and it was in the way he held his son, the large hands engulfing little ones around a crosse. "… yeah."

Scott and Stiles looked at them, sometimes, when they found the time to share a meal, a drink, a movie, complains about their jobs. She knew that glimpse in her son's eyes— it took a sitting down and both of them to quash down the ideas wildly flying between the two boys, of being "brothers for real." Melissa and John were friends, good friends. There was nothing between them, even if she would have sometimes wished the contrary, in the dead of the night— John was a good man, a good-looking man and she had eyes. 

There was a Sheriff's Department cookout at her mother's house— still her mother's house, not hers yet, not until she would remember the magics and the tricks and would see the books and photo albums for what they were, for her legacy. Then another, and another, and John coming for dinner when they could match their schedules a couple of times. There were Scott and Stiles still running around, playing lacrosse just the two of them or with the kids in their grade and Scott wheezing through it, and she was so proud of him for persevering, just as much as she wished he would slow down and not kill himself on the field. The both of them ran into all the troubles they could find in Beacon Hills, from lost dogs to pranks, under John's unamused stare and more than a couple of ride in the back of the cars of the Beacon Hills' Sheriff Department. 

Then high school. She had more time, a little more, now. She was still overworked, but she was used to it. Scott took the test for his driving license as soon as he could. She was so proud of him when he showed her the little piece of plastic. She was even more proud of him for paying for it himself. The money was still his, only his, but she never mentioned it when there was more change in the jar in the kitchen than she had last seen or a sandwich marked "mom's lunch" that she hadn't bought. Once Stiles got his license and his car, the two of them were off more often than not. John and John's men knew to keep an eye on their troublemakers. 

Scott's asthma got a little better, too. She didn't try to discourage him from playing lacrosse in school. She knew he could do it, absently drew charms on the bar he used for pull-ups. In freshman year, he even took the time to go with her to the gym. Sometimes she watched him and her little boy who cried at dead birds and walked around the house on her feet wasn't here. Instead, it was a young man getting taller everyday. She'd tell him about her family soon, that was what she thought at the start of his sophomore year.

Then what she should have seen, known, realized— if only she hadn't locked her magics out of fear and forgetfulness. Then werewolves and magic and hunters and other things she had no name for. Then fearing for her son's life.

At the station, as she stayed still and useless behind bars and saw her son being shot and John being knocked unconscious and monsters and hunters and her son shifting, when she recoiled from her son, it was out of guilt, out of disgust. In herself. Not in Scott, never in Scott. Her son, her beautiful, caring, strong boy— she should have seen, she should have realized, she should have protected him. 

In the days after Scott— after she accept the fact that she failed her son, again, the first time being not kicking her good-for-nothing husband out earlier, but couldn't face everything just yet, there were a lot of side glances at her phone. There was no mama or abuela to call, as much as she would have wanted to hear their voices, as much as she would have wanted them to be there, her mama making hot cocoa for her on the stove, adding a knife's point of cayenne in the pan. There was no mama or abuela, but there were her tías and aunts and cousins she hadn't talked to in years, not since funerals and weddings and new years' cards.

In the end, the phone stayed on its hook, but the books and albums and journals she hadn't touched since moving in went up with her that night. She had wasted enough time. She couldn't let herself be locked away and useless again. And she let herself think about how to tell Scott, now that he belonged to the same world as hers twice over.

+

Hurried knocks at the front door woke her up. She sat up with a start, reaching for her phone, to see if she had missed a call, if someone was injured, if Scott— They knew to call her, now, if something went wrong, despite Scott's protests. She knew they all went to Deaton more often than not, and she had been right to trust him all those years ago, but Alan for all his qualities was a veterinarian, and not all the ones who ran in the pack healed. They still needed modern medicines and stitches and antiseptic for their scratches and more serious wounds. The display only showed her the day and date. She had went to bed only two hours ago, too wired to sleep right after her shift, had gone through her mother's latest journal for the third time. Scott wasn't there, off with Isaac at Derek's. She needed to talk to her son, then to the leader of this merry band, and soon. 

The knocks came again, louder.

There was no light outside but for the lamplight in front of Mrs Alana's house and her empty driveway. Melissa walked down the stairs carefully, fingers brushing charms and knots, feeling the reassuring curl and warmth of the magics. "Who's there?"

She heard shuffling and sniffs— or what sounded like it. The trusty bat was in the umbrella stand, and she gripped it. She knew what crawled around at night, she knew the dangers— she knew what wolfsbane and mountain ashes could do, and finding jars of those in the basement should have been a surprise, if she was still forgetting who the house had belonged to. The bat had been dipped in it. Scott had no reason to use it now.

" 's me," she heard. "It's Stiles."

She peeked through the curtained window on the right of the door. There was the shape of the jeep parked by the curve. There was the shape of a human on the doorstep, but many things had human shape. Many things and many people, that she had seen and read about, many things and people that wanted nothing more than to destroy. Stiles had had a key, most probably still had it. There was no reason for him to be knocking at her door. Paranoia and all that, and she laughed at herself in her head over the overused cliché.

"Mrs. McCall, just—" a silence, a move from the shadow. "I found— I found some of my m-mom's things and there was— it said you know things and she asked you to—"

She still had no idea why he wasn't using his key, but that was Stiles. No-one else could possibly have known. She still kept her hand wrapped around the handle of the bat when she opened the door. Stiles walked in, his head lowered, clutching something in his hand. Melissa closed the door and put the bat back where it had came from. Her hand on Stiles' arm didn't make him move. She pushed, a little, directing him to the living room and the couch. When was the last time she had seen him?

For all that mattered, when was the last time she had seen Scott and Stiles in the same place? 

She held Stiles on the couch as long as he let her, going back to the first time she had held him that way, crying and calling for his mother. He was taller, now, much taller in the same way Scott was, and he wasn't crying. She could feel him shaking, but there was no crying. There hadn't been any in years.

"Did you know?" He asked, and suddenly he was the little boy who had declared Scott his best friend.

"Know what?"

"About… about everything. About magic." He was flattening the paper on his knee, over and over. "About what I am."

She took a breath. "…No. She asked, your mother, years ago, if it was okay for you to come to me when the time was right. I guess now is as good a time as any. But I don't know the details. I only know about magic."

He twisted around. "So you know, you knew, about werewolves, and kanima, and the hunters and you should have said something about Peter—" 

"Stiles, Stiles, shhh, I'm sorry, I didn't know about any of that."

"But you said, you just said you knew about magic—"

"Stiles. Until three months ago, I had been locking away all I knew. All the magic, all the knowledge. I wish I hadn't, I wish I had seen what was going on earlier. I wish I had told Scott already."

"Scott… he doesn't know." 

"No-one know. Just you and me." 

Stiles didn't move, didn't talk. Then, "… but I don't know anything." 

Melissa smiled, at that, at the same thirst and curiosity in Stiles' voice Scott's had. She got up, went to the photo albums and journals that were hiding in plain sight, the ones that were not currently in her room. Her room, in her house. She felt the warmth of the magic moving and smiled. 

Melissa turned back to Stiles, to her son's best friend, to, soon, her apprentice. "Let's call Scott." She looked at the cover of the first photo album, her parents' wedding photo looking back, the women smiling and everyone else knowing. "Let's call your dad."

She was done hiding.

**Author's Note:**

> Now with [art, Melissa and Stiles](http://alyyks.tumblr.com/post/50535040362).
> 
> [tumblr](http://alyyks.tumblr.com/).


End file.
